Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's appeal against his sentence of two months'
imprisonment for holding an illegal meeting and resisting the police at Woodford on October 23rd, was re- jected on Saturday by Mr. Henn, the County-Court Judge of Limerick. In his decision, the Judge declared that Mr. Blunt, by attending an illegal midnight meeting at Woodford, held on October 16th, at which Mr. O'Brien burnt the Lord-Lieutenant's proclamation, had proved that when he convened the meeting of October 23rd he deliberately intended to resist the law. He clearly could not have thought that he was within his legal right, but acted with a full knowledge and intention of com- mitting an illegal act. Now, the supremacy of the law is the essence of freedom ; and for resisting it and resisting the police, Mr. Blunt, "though a highly educated man, of generous impulse and refined feeling," had been rightly punished by the Magistrates, whose sentence the Judge would not reduce,—though had he believed the accused to be only perverse, he should have done so. Sentence was accordingly confirmed, and Mr. Blunt has been sent to prison,—where, being an Englishman, he accepts the consequences of his own acts, wears the prison dress, picks oakum patiently, and does not whine.
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